Trust and Gift Tax Planning

Our Inheritance & Gift Tax team were involved in the complex reorganisation of a historical UK-based trust structure with Irish beneficiaries. The reorganisation was further complicated by the difference in tax treatment applied under UK and Irish trust tax law to different types of investments held by the trust, e.g. shares in companies, interests in property and offshore funds etc.

We ensured that the historical structure was reorganised, so that gifts could be made from the trust to the Irish beneficiaries, with minimal Irish or UK tax liabilities.

We also considered the Irish tax implications for a parent and an adult child on the immediate gift of a shareholding interest in a company, as well as the future gift of the remaining interest and minimised the tax impact by virtue of claiming entrepreneur relief, retirement relief and business asset relief.

Corporate Restructuring

Our Corporate Tax team:

• assisted shareholders in a company to identify the tax implications of acquiring a development site through their corporate vehicle. This was a significant project which involved considering the Corporation Tax, Income Tax, VAT and Stamp Duty implications of the acquisition and holding of the site as well as the tax implications on disposal of the fully developed properties.  
• advised on the unwind of a holding company structure to distribute assets of the business (including shares in subsidiaries) to the shareholders on retirement. We maximised opportunities for the shareholders to claim Retirement Relief and Entrepreneur Relief.
• carried out corporate re-organisations for two corporate groups to streamline their business structures, which may lead to a spin off of some or all of their individual business lines to acquirers.
• worked with a large corporate group to oversee and implement an improvement in the tax efficiency of the interaction of their German, UK and Irish headquartered group and associated company activities.

Revenue Engagement

We successfully settled two cases with the Tax Appeals Commission before the end of the year. This ended a lengthy process of negotiation on several tax technical matters.

We also liaised with Revenue in relation to ongoing Revenue Audits for clients across various tax heads including VAT, Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax. This involved liaising with and preparing technical written submissions to Revenue seeking to bring matters to a timely close for clients.

Engaging with Revenue on technical issues or taking a case to the Tax Appeals Commission can be a daunting process for many individuals, particularly those who do not have any prior experience in this area. If you would like to discuss this (or any of the above) further, please contact a member of our team.

Private Client

During the year, we:

• advised several high-level executives moving to Ireland to work with multinationals in a broad range of industry sectors including tech, pharma, banking etc. We helped such clients arrange their personal financial affairs to ensure that they could avail of the beneficial non domiciled remittance basis regime once they become Irish tax resident.
• assisted a number of clients with employment related tax matters, working closely with their solicitors in providing advice on matters such as termination payments paid on exit from high level positions.
• continued to provide extensive assistance to executives in managing the compliance aspects of participating in company share schemes, stock options, RSU’s etc.
• advised a large professional partnerships throughout the year on a wide range of topics including assistance with Revenue interventions, managing tax aspects of Partner retirements, Tax Clearance issues etc.

The area of pensions continues to be a hot topic with clients including some non-Irish tax resident clients choosing to migrate their retirement funds offshore and an increase in the number of Revenue interventions about self-administered pension schemes.  

We advised a client on the sale of their shareholding in a company acquired by a UK company, to ensure that our client’s share disposal was not caught by anti-avoidance funding legislation, thereby enabling the event result in Capital Gains Tax treatment as opposed to Income Tax.